Group C is turning into a bit of lovefest. After the captains of Australia, Denmark and France lobbied to get Peruvian captain Paolo Guerrero reinstated when FIFA tried to ban him for taking cocaine, now the Danish National Choir has rewritten the words of the Danish national anthem to be about Peru.

Hopefully one day we'll learn to be as gracious to people with unusual wardrobe choices.

So how do we think Korea will do then? I haven't been keeping up with the expectations in Korea. Losing at home to a non-qualifier Bosnia 3-1 in your send-off match is not ideal preparation. Results since Shin took over from Stielike don't show much sign for encouragement, apart maybe from a 2-1 win over an understrength Colombia side back in November and the East Asia title with Asian based players. It's been a while though since they failed to score. They can't rely solely on Son Heung-min for attacking intent (a problem Denmark also have with over reliance on a Spurs player.) so hopefully Hwang Hee-chan gets plenty of playing time and has a breakout tournament.

They're in a tough group and right now I would consider it a success if they get a point. It would be good to see Kim Seung-gyu save a penalty and while I've kept really quiet about it at work, I would love it if they beat Germany, love it. Hopefully they're still fighting for the title by that point and Mexico still need to go to Jekaterinburg and get something. Maybe I should stick a pink tutu on it.

What are the expectations in Korea from the fans and the media? Are there many Korean fans going? Late night public viewings in Gwanghwamun?

My predictions: I'm still going with Argentina to win it. I haven't really got a good reason for that other than it has to be someone who's won it before and they have Messi. He's the only player capable of conjuring up a goal whenever he feels like it, something that gets increasingly useful as the tournament progresses and the matches get tighter. If teams try too hard to shut him down then the rest of the Argentinian side have enough class to take advantage. I'm not buying this talk of Neymar, and Ronaldo has already had his time in the national team sun. I'll even add semis of France vs Brazil and Germany vs Argentina.

I've convinced myself that Portugal have to be the flop of the tournament. If they lose their opener against Spain (more likely to end 0-0) I could also see them losing to Morocco or Iran. Going out in the groups might not be much of an underachievement for them but they are European champions, so that will outrank whatever disaster befalls the hosts or Tunisia who were last month ranked 14th in the world by those wise owls at FIFA.

For surprise of the tournament I could see Senegal doing well, but it is really going to have to be whichever team joins Uruguay out of group A. The opening match is actually a fascinating battle to see who will be the worst team at the tournament, bringing together as it does the two lowest FIFA ranked teams. It will be interesting to see if Putin shows up. He knows Russia will have to get knocked out somewhere and won't want to associate himself too much. Apparently he doesn't much care for football anyway. The qualifiers from group A will play the teams that get through from Portugal's group, so we could well end up with at least one rank-outsider in the quarter-finals.

I think there's a 50-50 chance of one of the matches not being played to the full 90 minutes, either because of trouble, or boycotts or politics. The world has been getting like that recently and it makes for great clickbait. Our World Cup predictions on this site are a bit hit and miss though. One of our favourite commenters on here even predicted that Korea and Russia would make it out of group H in 2014.

You can tell who the Western spies are at Korean football matches. They have them all the way down to K3 level, standing around awkwardly in their anoraks, not talking to anyone. I can just imagine Shin in the dressing room to Jang Hyun-soo: "I know you're hoping to impress the foreign scouts and land a money-spinning transfer to Europe, but it's not going to happen, so forget about it. Why don't you pretend to be someone else instead? It'll be good for the Han."

I thought they did OK. Certainly better than I was expecting and better than Luxembourg. Losing to a VAR penalty is probably the closest you can fairly come to not losing. Credit to Shin for starting all three of his forwards. Picking an attacking line-up and then defending deeply is just the sort of thing I would do. Cho Hyun-woo did well in goal, although it would have been fun to see Kim Seung-gyu at the penalty as I knew Granqvist was going to put it to the right. Hwang Hee-chan didn't quite have the break-out game I was hoping for and looked a bit short of match practice. Well done Ki for comforting Kim Min-woo after the penalty - he's a team player after all. But since when has he not been taking any of the set pieces? He was playing very deep the whole game. Don't tell me he's in there for his tackling ability. It was also fun watching Lee Seung-woo. I think that's the first time I've seen him play for Korea, although while he's playing it does look like someone brought their son along to the match.

Probably Sweden was Korea's best chance of getting a point, but at least the Korean fans were in good voice, and while the results are bad for Korea, they are worse for Germany. If Sweden stop them from scoring in one match like they stopped the Italians from scoring in two then the Germans could be in real trouble. As for Sweden, when was the last time they had a team full of bright young hopefuls? They've been fielding a team on the verge of retirement for as long as I can remember.

If you're a defender you can't have arms in the penalty area. According to the rules you're supposed to leave them at the edge of the box. The unnatural position rule is one of the dumbest in football. How are people supposed to jump with their arms by their sides or slide with their arms behind their backs? If you're on the ground you can't put your arms anywhere that isn't unnatural except burying them under the pitch. People made a lot of fun of Simon Poulsen back in 2012, but what else do the rules expect him to do?

Korea are only losing at half-time against Mexico because a cross that was highly unlikely to lead to a goal was converted into a penalty by a stupid rule.